Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State

Where the Heel?, Part VIII

It’s time for a new installment of “Where the Heel?,” but I’m adding a twist to this one. Instead of identifying a place based on an image, we’re looking for the North Carolina location that is described by a specific slogan. Can you fill in the blank below? If you have a guess, leave it as a comment. Good luck!

The “If you like living…” slogan may seem a little generic, but it appeared on a 1958 brochure for Chapel Hill that currently resides in the NCC’s local ephemera collection. Interestingly, this brochure is more about living in Chapel Hill than visiting and it strongly emphasizes community and livability. It even claims that 99% of people who live in Chapel Hill consider it to be the perfect place to live!

The brochure contains all kinds of useful general information about the town and brief descriptions of both the University and the Research Triangle. It also quotes Time Magazine–which named Chapel Hill one of “Twenty-four Nice Places to Live”–and Thomas Wolfe, who said that it “beats every other town all ‘hollow.'” Perhaps the best feature of this item, however, is the map printed on the inside that gives a looping tour of the town and lists stops at campus buildings (including the brand-new Ackland Art Museum), churches, residential areas, and even the homes of authors Paul Green and Betty Smith.

You know, my distant cousin Andy Barker presides over “Love Valley” . . . Do you have anything from the Love Valley Musical Festival–which was suppoed to have been the next best thing to Woodstock . . .